Periody Fri -- THURSDAY
Apr. 30th, 2026 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYup, I haven't even started my long weekend yet and already I'm screwing up what day it is. XD It just feels like it should be a Friday, given I'm now off for the next four days! And I'm sure the period brain isn't helping in that regard... Anyway, yes, I have been struggling with the usual "extra grumpy" and "lack of concentration" that always comes with the red curse today, I'm sad to say -- my brain is just determined to be tired and annoyed and sad. But even with that, I have managed to accomplish some stuff:
Work – My final day at work this week was mostly centered around fixing stuff, with my main accomplishments of the day being:
A) Taking a phone call from one of the people I e-mailed about a credit card gift not going through and setting up her pledge with her on her new card (old one got hacked)
B) Matching up some more IDs to scans of pledge cards and in-pew forms and the like on the scanning app...which led to me finding a check stub from a parish with a listing of donors on it. And realizing what our processors had put on the parish record as a single anonymous one-time gift was in fact intended to cover gifts from multiple donors (presumably they had all given cash to the parish). *facepalm* To be fair, a portion of the gift was anonymous, two of the donors didn’t exist on our system, and one was under a different address and parish affiliation, but – still!
C) Informing my supervisor about both the above issue with the parish check and the issue I found the other day where the processors changed the name of the husband on a couple’s record because their son’s in-pew form got the wrong ID sticker put on it (this is the record that ALSO has a couple of online gifts from the original couple’s two kids applied to it thanks to all the online gifts using the same e-mail address, causing them all to be matched to the same ID number) – she thanked me for catching it all, which was nice, but I would have appreciated her saying she’d talk to our processors about it a bit more
D) Getting the check from Fiscal to send to the lady whose gift to the RI Food Bank was accidentally processed by us as a payment on her pledge and writing up a “hey, here’s what happened, we’re sorry, please accept this refund” letter go to with it...followed shortly thereafter by confirming to my coworker that we didn’t have anything to do with “Catholic Relief Services” as she discovered ANOTHER check made out to a different cause that our processors had put on as a CCA gift. *grumbles* We’re going to have to tell them “hey, please only process checks that are EXPLICITLY MADE OUT TO THE CCA,” aren’t we?
E) And doing a massive reversal batch to take the RI Food Bank gift off that lady’s record, split the parish check between all the donors mentioned on the check stub (after putting on the two that weren’t already on the system and updating the one that was at a different address and parish), and – having corrected the name of the husband on that record that got changed by our processors and set up proper records for the kids – moving all the gifts that didn’t belong to that original couple to their kids’ records so everyone got the proper credit. Yay!
*nods* I guess that was reasonably productive – especially given the whole “being on the red curse” thing. Still, glad I don’t have to put up any of it for the next four days!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: RACCOON CITY! GIANT SPIDER! FAMILIAR JERKASS? Episode 5!” Today’s chunklet contained –
A) Grace running around the lower level of the water treatment plant, trying to turn on the two remaining power distributors without getting got by The Girl! Which was much more difficult than it sounded, as the lower level was a very cramped space and The Girl was pretty much always where Grace needed to go. Didn’t help that when she got close to the second distributor, the game insisted on letting The Girl grab her by the head and toss her away in a cutscene! At least Jane was no longer scared of Grace getting got by The Girl thanks to Andy having gotten chomped by said Girl three times in the first six minutes of the episode. XD But with some careful hiding, some luck, and Andy breaking out the faux-David Attenborough voice during some of the sneaking (“Here we see The Girl in its native habitat, biting Grace on the head” [nearly walks into The Girl] “oh no!”), Grace was eventually able to maneuver around The Girl, turn on the other two power distributors (after getting the necessary extra handle for the third), and then get upstairs and open the roof hatch to the sunlight above, causing The Girl to melt into a pitiful pile of burned flesh. Now that should be the last of that particular stalker enemy! (Though you should never bet on that in a Resident Evil game – anyone else remember how many times it took to kill Jack Baker from RE7?)
B) Grace finally returning to the storage area where she left Emily – only to find that the little girl had died from her wounds during her absence. :( Grace, desperate, tried to revive her with some CPR, and for a split second, it look like it had actually worked (despite Emily having definitely died of something that couldn’t be fixed with CPR) –
And then she started spasming, and transformed into a horrible gnarly monster with one long claw arm and a sideways mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. D: Yeah, that is not the result you want from CPR! The monster formerly known as Emily then promptly started attacking Grace as she tried to get through to her –
Only for Leon to show up, gun at the ready, and start shooting. Cue him taking down the monster while Grace screamed at him that it was Emily and he needed to stop. *wince* Eventually the creature hit the floor (we’ll find out later if it’s actually permanently dead or not, I guess), and Grace ran sobbing over to the corpse and angrily told Leon that she’d wanted to save her, before whimpering that this was all her fault. (Which, you know what, it fucking is – not because she took Emily out of her cell in the first place, leaving her in there would have also been a dick move, but because she made ONE attempt to staunch Emily’s bleeding and then basically FORGOT ABOUT IT in favor of trying to take out The Girl. You couldn’t find ANYTHING to use as a bandage?!) Leon told her that he understood, he really did, but they were still alive, and had to keep moving –
And Grace took out Requiem, slid it back to him, stated “No,” and walked off without him. Which would have probably been more moving and dramatic if the OXBoxers hadn’t rightfully pointed out during the whole thing that, one, Grace herself had just murdered a monster who was also a mutated little girl without a second thought, so who the fuck was she to judge Leon, and two, it HAD taken Leon a hell of a long time to get there when there was really no reason for him to delay (their running theory was that his entirely-too-tight t-shirt had gotten sweaty and he’d taken it off and then struggled to get it back on again XD). So basically no one was in the right here and it was just a terrible, painful situation all around. *shakehead* Made worse by Leon going to pick up the gun – only to drop to his hands and knees as he started coughing up blood from his Raccoon City Syndrome… (Of course, the real reason for all this animosity between Grace and Leon is the rule that “there must always a reason to keep the protagonists separated in dual-protagonist Resident Evil games” – and let me tell you, it is really getting under my skin. Let them talk, damn it!)
C) Grace heading up and out of the water treatment plant – only to encounter none other than Dr. Gideon by the exit, who informed her that Elpis was still within reach and that he’d like her to come with him (while the gang made more Pinky and the Brain jokes – he does sound rather like The Brain). He then opened the door in front of them to reveal a friend of his –
A friend who looked surprisingly like series mainstay villain Albert Wesker! :O Not exactly like him – he had a different haircut and an earring, for starters – but the vibes were definitely the same. He told Grace that she was the reason for Raccoon City’s destruction, but also the key to “building a brave new world,” then invited her to come with them to discover her true purpose as a helicopter flew in. The OXBoxers were like “uh, no, DON’T go with these guys, one of them is basically Dr. Snake Monster and the other one is Wesker, and also DEFINITELY don’t get in a HELICOPTER with them,” but the scene cut to black before we could learn Grace’s decision…
D) A quick check-in with Sherry Birkin back at what I presume is DSO headquarters, taking some medication for her own Raccoon City Syndrome/mutated T-virus, then a swap back to Leon, driving to Raccoon City for...mysterious reasons (the OXBoxers sure as heck couldn’t figure it out). Sherry informed him that she hadn’t been able to pull up anything on Elpis and that the higher ups had told her to shut down the investigation when she asked for a higher clearance to keep investigating, refusing to tell her why, while Mike spent his time worrying that Leon no longer had his super-fancy super-fast Porsche (Andy reminded him it was a branding deal, so Leon wasn’t about to lose the car anytime soon – and indeed, it was soon proven to be the same car). :p Leon told Sherry that he was willing to go it alone, but Sherry assured him that she was used to working from the shadows. Nice to see her and Leon as such a solid team, honestly. Though Jane was happier that they hadn’t tried sticking her in a sailor suit to make sure people recognized her as the little girl from RE2. XD
E) Leon arriving in Raccoon City on a mission to find Grace! Because she seemed to be the key to whatever this “Elpis” was. Sherry provided him with some coordinates to a spot in the center of the city that she got off Dr. Gideon’s computer, and he began running through the wreckage, smashing boxes and collecting loot while the OXBoxers joked about how the newspaper printers hadn’t been allowed to evacuate because the final news reporter was determined to get out one last paper and Mike went “not back underground already” when Andy went down to check out an entrance to the subway (fortunately it was barricaded). Unfortunately, after getting some goodies out of an old hotel, Leon pushed his way through the door on the other side into a section of the city that was filled with lots and lots of spider webs…
Aaaand cue an extended boss fight with a horrifying giant spider, because for some reason video games will NOT stop throwing giant spiders at people. D: And this one was even worse because it had a big old maw with teeth behind the usual spider pincers. Leon first had to flee from the damn thing into a very cramped building with very narrow hallways (where he spent his time slashing through webs, killing the monster spider’s little albino children, and getting smashed up quite a few times by the spider leaping through holes in the wall or skittering around behind him), then finally had to fight it properly in a big old boss arena where he had to duck and weave around a central wall and hop up onto and down from a small elevated platform at the back to get a good shot at the Cluster Of Weak Spots on its back. The OXBoxers found the experience largely upsetting, with Andy noting that Ellen would not be playing this game and Jane commenting they’d have to warn her not to watch this bit (given she’s a known massive arachnophobe); Mike and Jane debating if dealing with the load of tiny albino spiders was worse than dealing with the big giant one (Jane thought the load of little spiders was worse due to numbers, while Mike felt they were about the same horror-wise); and Mike and Jane trying to figure out where the big spider even CAME from while Andy did his best to fight it (Jane thought it might be a Spider-Man situation where a spider just ended up in the equipment, while Mike thought it was a deliberate experiment because there was a giant spider boss in RE1 as well – jokes were made about how the scientists just MADE the stuff and then turned it over to Marketing so THEY could sell it). The fight ended with Leon leaping on the spider to kill it with his hatchet, only to have to ride it down as it smashed through a bunch of floors into (ironically) an old subway platform. *shudder* Ugh. Can we stop with the giant spider fights, please? I know they’re an easy way to freak people out, but come on.
F) Leon emerging from the subway near the barricade surrounding the center of Raccoon City (presumably around the bit that was closest to the big old bomb – Mike noted they really should have put it about three miles out) and learning from Sherry there was really no way around it – but fortunately for him, somebody had, in the past, set up some C4 to blast their way through a big old gate in the wall. Of course, in true RE fashion, he had to go and find the detonator (Andy TRIED to set it off with a gunshot, like Mike suggested, but no dice) –
Which led him to a nearby mysterious camp! Containing some orders for the Engineer Corps telling them where the three parts to the detonator were (because of COURSE the stupid thing wouldn’t be in one piece), and a laptop and a mysterious box that couldn’t be accessed because they needed power. Fortunately, there was a generator nearby, which Leon turned on to get everything running again –
But while he was outside, he noticed a familiar patch on the exterior of the tent for the BSAA (either “Bullshit Alcoholics Anonymous” or “Bullshit Automobile Association” if you believed Mike or Andy respectively XD). He reported this to Sherry, who wondered what the hell they were doing in Raccoon City – from what Leon found on the laptop, whoever it was in the squad, they too had been trying to get to the center of town. Which prompted Sherry to reveal something else to Leon –
Namely, that there was no order to bomb Raccoon City in the Pentagon records she’d searched. Meaning that the government hadn’t done it – someone else had. (The gang were like “wasn’t the Pentagon concerned when one of their cities randomly got bombed??” proving they don’t know the American government that well.) Leon wondered who –
And cue the reveal that Dr. Gideon was watching him through the laptop camera while he, Possibly Albert Wesker/Definitely The “Zeno” Character He Was Talking To Before, and Grace flew over the city in the helicopter. *wags finger* I am ashamed of you, Grace. Anyway, Gideon told Zeno that his plan to scare away the DSO had apparently not worked – Zeno told him that he’d leave the matter in Gideon’s hands then, causing Gideon to do a worrying head-flex…
G) And Leon grabbing a “tactical tracker” from the now-powered-up electronic box, (which stated that it would track his kills and give him credits that could later be used to buy things from the box – the gang noted that this was basically an incentive program to kill people) before creeping into a nearby warehouse to investigate it and maybe find a key for the big old box of BSAA stuff outside. He collected a few goodies from the opening room, including gunpowder for crafting (causing Mike to reveal that he has never enjoyed a crafting system in a video game, gasp – Andy promptly accused him of hating most video game mechanics XD Mike: “just the boring ones!”), then ventured deeper into the warehouse, shooting boxes off hooks covered in yellow paint and caution tape to form pathways between high shelves and whatnot –
Before stumbling across a bunch of old zombies digging their way out of the floor! The, uh, concrete floor, which caused some questions for the OXBoxers. XD I left off with Andy discovering that these zombies, despite their emaciated looks, were rather tougher than the ones back in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, with one guy managing to score a nasty hit on Leon with a broken shovel that gave everyone an extreme close-up look at his stubble. *wince* Fortunately Leon was able to get him back and claim the shovel to use against his zombie friends. Because Leon is cool like that. :p We’ll finish this episode off tomorrow and see how far Leon gets into the city – and if Grace really HAS thrown her lot in with the bad guys...
2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got over a page of edits done today, I’m happy to say. :) Today’s session covered:
A) The group reacting to the appearance of Slugs the Hull (so named because it was armed with a pair of slugger rifles), with Kasimir noting to Victor that he would have appreciated him leading with “oh, my parents have a Hull with a pair of slugger rifles down here” when he asked him about traps – Victor retorted that he’d been planning to tell Kasimir about it once they were past the pressure plates, like he’d asked. After all, he hadn’t know Kasimir would fall – he’d honestly been hoping they could just sneak past it! Alice, however, was on Kasimir’s side, saying she would have appreciated a warning about the Hull ready and willing to kill intruders earlier – Smiler quickly corrected her, explaining that slugger rifles were non-lethal, shooting compressed air instead of bullets. Kasimir confirmed that they were handy if you wanted to bring someone down without getting the Spirit Wardens involved – but that they could break bones if you were in range, and Slugs was going to be in range soon, so…
B) Barnaby telling the others it was fine, he’d just order Slugs to stand down – the Hull would never shoot him, he was too rich! Fortunately for his bones, Smiler grabbed his arm and towed him back, stating that he believed Barnaby was on the right track, but had the wrong person – after all, Slugs would be much more likely to listen to a command from a member of the family that owned it, right? Victor anxiously revealed that he’d never actually given Slugs a command before – the Hull had never been awake during his previous visits – but Alice pointed out he was still a Van Dort, and so it was worth a shot. Cue poor Victor nearly strangling himself with his tie and asking Alice not to put it like that. XD She quickly apologized and told him to speak to Slugs like she’d spoken to Abigail when telling her not to immediately rat on them to Bumby at Houndsditch – Victor noted that Abigail had still ratted them out to Bumby, but Alice countered that they’d still bought themselves some time, and after all, Slugs wasn’t a snotty little girl – she hoped, anyway. Victor confirmed that Slugs was almost certainly a condemned prisoner, like most other Hulls...then anxiously noted that the ghost inside felt weirdly flat – he could tell it was there and that was about it. Which, after so much time spent around other, more animate ghosts, really gave him the willies. (As it should, really.) Alice and Smiler said they could discuss the ethics of Hulls later – right, now, they really needed this one not to shoot them.
C) And Victor going up to Slugs, telling it that he was one of the owners of the vault and that the others were his guests, and ordering it to go back to its cupboard and leave them alone! Please. There was a tense moment where Slugs just stared at him –
And then it indicated it understood and turned to clomp back into its hidey-hole. Cue a relieved Victor slumping against the wall, while Smiler gave him a cheery “knew you could do it!” and Barnaby noted he hadn’t been quite forceful enough, but they’d get him used to ordering around the servants yet! Victor just said “thank you” because everything else going through his head was too rude. XD
Ahhh, good stuff. I do love writing my Valicer In The Dark stories – they’re so fun! Tomorrow, the gang goes to take on the final trap between them and the vault door – another nearly-invisible tripwire! Perhaps not as exciting as a Hull armed with compressed-air guns, but still. :p
3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, if only because WeirdKev on tumblr shared the link to a YouTube Short with me to get my opinion on it: “The "Apocalypse" of 1910 | Weird Days in History” by Extra History! A one-minute video talking about how, in May of 1910, there was a bit of a panic when Earth passed through the tail of Haley’s Comet thanks to Camille Flammarion, a popular French science writer at the time. You see, Flammarion wrote a couple of articles musing about what might happen when Earth passed through the tail of the comet in late 1909 and early 1910 – and while most of his predictions were of the sober “this won’t be a big deal” sort, he did throw in a couple of wild speculations about the comet triggering a “chemical exchange” that would destroy Earth’s oxygen, or – when the comet was discovered to have cyanogen gas (“a cousin of cyanide,” as the narrator put it) – poisoning all life on earth. Unfortunately for him, the press naturally decided to spread around the wild speculations without actually noting that they were intended to be the worst case scenarios and unlikely to happen, leading to a not-insignificant number of people boarding up their houses to avoid the gas, defaulting on loans and refusing to plant crops because what was the point, and even in one case hiding in a cave. We even had the usual assholes taking advantage of the panic to sell useless “comet pills” to protect you from the gas and helmets to save you from falling objects. Naturally, nothing actually happened, and presumably everyone felt very silly afterward. Just a good object lesson in how, if you’re a famous figure a lot of people listen to, maybe temper your wild predictions about stuff like this just a tad! Or at least make sure the press doesn’t get a hold of them.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do on Valice Multiverse again, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did manage to find a couple of things to fill out my queue for the week:
A) That text post by callagoo going “anyone else think the corpse bride should have ended with victor and victoria and emily as a poly couple” (and my tags saying “yup me”) for Friday
B) And a reblog of “Fan.tasia” (that incredible music video of mashed-up Disney movies to a song that itself was a mash-up of multiple other songs – if you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself) from the depths of my “#song saturday” tag for Saturday!
So that was good. :)
Yeah, not bad -- though it all took longer than I wanted thanks to the damn period. *grumbles* Well, that's just gonna happen during this time of the month, I suppose...anyway, now that I've finally wrapped up all of these write-ups, it's time to consider going to bed. Tomorrow, main goals are to work a little more on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; work some more on Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" play some Baldur's Gate III and finally freaking recruit Karlach; and get in a workout and finish that RE9 LP episode from OXBox! We'll see how I do -- night all!
Work – My final day at work this week was mostly centered around fixing stuff, with my main accomplishments of the day being:
A) Taking a phone call from one of the people I e-mailed about a credit card gift not going through and setting up her pledge with her on her new card (old one got hacked)
B) Matching up some more IDs to scans of pledge cards and in-pew forms and the like on the scanning app...which led to me finding a check stub from a parish with a listing of donors on it. And realizing what our processors had put on the parish record as a single anonymous one-time gift was in fact intended to cover gifts from multiple donors (presumably they had all given cash to the parish). *facepalm* To be fair, a portion of the gift was anonymous, two of the donors didn’t exist on our system, and one was under a different address and parish affiliation, but – still!
C) Informing my supervisor about both the above issue with the parish check and the issue I found the other day where the processors changed the name of the husband on a couple’s record because their son’s in-pew form got the wrong ID sticker put on it (this is the record that ALSO has a couple of online gifts from the original couple’s two kids applied to it thanks to all the online gifts using the same e-mail address, causing them all to be matched to the same ID number) – she thanked me for catching it all, which was nice, but I would have appreciated her saying she’d talk to our processors about it a bit more
D) Getting the check from Fiscal to send to the lady whose gift to the RI Food Bank was accidentally processed by us as a payment on her pledge and writing up a “hey, here’s what happened, we’re sorry, please accept this refund” letter go to with it...followed shortly thereafter by confirming to my coworker that we didn’t have anything to do with “Catholic Relief Services” as she discovered ANOTHER check made out to a different cause that our processors had put on as a CCA gift. *grumbles* We’re going to have to tell them “hey, please only process checks that are EXPLICITLY MADE OUT TO THE CCA,” aren’t we?
E) And doing a massive reversal batch to take the RI Food Bank gift off that lady’s record, split the parish check between all the donors mentioned on the check stub (after putting on the two that weren’t already on the system and updating the one that was at a different address and parish), and – having corrected the name of the husband on that record that got changed by our processors and set up proper records for the kids – moving all the gifts that didn’t belong to that original couple to their kids’ records so everyone got the proper credit. Yay!
*nods* I guess that was reasonably productive – especially given the whole “being on the red curse” thing. Still, glad I don’t have to put up any of it for the next four days!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: RACCOON CITY! GIANT SPIDER! FAMILIAR JERKASS? Episode 5!” Today’s chunklet contained –
A) Grace running around the lower level of the water treatment plant, trying to turn on the two remaining power distributors without getting got by The Girl! Which was much more difficult than it sounded, as the lower level was a very cramped space and The Girl was pretty much always where Grace needed to go. Didn’t help that when she got close to the second distributor, the game insisted on letting The Girl grab her by the head and toss her away in a cutscene! At least Jane was no longer scared of Grace getting got by The Girl thanks to Andy having gotten chomped by said Girl three times in the first six minutes of the episode. XD But with some careful hiding, some luck, and Andy breaking out the faux-David Attenborough voice during some of the sneaking (“Here we see The Girl in its native habitat, biting Grace on the head” [nearly walks into The Girl] “oh no!”), Grace was eventually able to maneuver around The Girl, turn on the other two power distributors (after getting the necessary extra handle for the third), and then get upstairs and open the roof hatch to the sunlight above, causing The Girl to melt into a pitiful pile of burned flesh. Now that should be the last of that particular stalker enemy! (Though you should never bet on that in a Resident Evil game – anyone else remember how many times it took to kill Jack Baker from RE7?)
B) Grace finally returning to the storage area where she left Emily – only to find that the little girl had died from her wounds during her absence. :( Grace, desperate, tried to revive her with some CPR, and for a split second, it look like it had actually worked (despite Emily having definitely died of something that couldn’t be fixed with CPR) –
And then she started spasming, and transformed into a horrible gnarly monster with one long claw arm and a sideways mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. D: Yeah, that is not the result you want from CPR! The monster formerly known as Emily then promptly started attacking Grace as she tried to get through to her –
Only for Leon to show up, gun at the ready, and start shooting. Cue him taking down the monster while Grace screamed at him that it was Emily and he needed to stop. *wince* Eventually the creature hit the floor (we’ll find out later if it’s actually permanently dead or not, I guess), and Grace ran sobbing over to the corpse and angrily told Leon that she’d wanted to save her, before whimpering that this was all her fault. (Which, you know what, it fucking is – not because she took Emily out of her cell in the first place, leaving her in there would have also been a dick move, but because she made ONE attempt to staunch Emily’s bleeding and then basically FORGOT ABOUT IT in favor of trying to take out The Girl. You couldn’t find ANYTHING to use as a bandage?!) Leon told her that he understood, he really did, but they were still alive, and had to keep moving –
And Grace took out Requiem, slid it back to him, stated “No,” and walked off without him. Which would have probably been more moving and dramatic if the OXBoxers hadn’t rightfully pointed out during the whole thing that, one, Grace herself had just murdered a monster who was also a mutated little girl without a second thought, so who the fuck was she to judge Leon, and two, it HAD taken Leon a hell of a long time to get there when there was really no reason for him to delay (their running theory was that his entirely-too-tight t-shirt had gotten sweaty and he’d taken it off and then struggled to get it back on again XD). So basically no one was in the right here and it was just a terrible, painful situation all around. *shakehead* Made worse by Leon going to pick up the gun – only to drop to his hands and knees as he started coughing up blood from his Raccoon City Syndrome… (Of course, the real reason for all this animosity between Grace and Leon is the rule that “there must always a reason to keep the protagonists separated in dual-protagonist Resident Evil games” – and let me tell you, it is really getting under my skin. Let them talk, damn it!)
C) Grace heading up and out of the water treatment plant – only to encounter none other than Dr. Gideon by the exit, who informed her that Elpis was still within reach and that he’d like her to come with him (while the gang made more Pinky and the Brain jokes – he does sound rather like The Brain). He then opened the door in front of them to reveal a friend of his –
A friend who looked surprisingly like series mainstay villain Albert Wesker! :O Not exactly like him – he had a different haircut and an earring, for starters – but the vibes were definitely the same. He told Grace that she was the reason for Raccoon City’s destruction, but also the key to “building a brave new world,” then invited her to come with them to discover her true purpose as a helicopter flew in. The OXBoxers were like “uh, no, DON’T go with these guys, one of them is basically Dr. Snake Monster and the other one is Wesker, and also DEFINITELY don’t get in a HELICOPTER with them,” but the scene cut to black before we could learn Grace’s decision…
D) A quick check-in with Sherry Birkin back at what I presume is DSO headquarters, taking some medication for her own Raccoon City Syndrome/mutated T-virus, then a swap back to Leon, driving to Raccoon City for...mysterious reasons (the OXBoxers sure as heck couldn’t figure it out). Sherry informed him that she hadn’t been able to pull up anything on Elpis and that the higher ups had told her to shut down the investigation when she asked for a higher clearance to keep investigating, refusing to tell her why, while Mike spent his time worrying that Leon no longer had his super-fancy super-fast Porsche (Andy reminded him it was a branding deal, so Leon wasn’t about to lose the car anytime soon – and indeed, it was soon proven to be the same car). :p Leon told Sherry that he was willing to go it alone, but Sherry assured him that she was used to working from the shadows. Nice to see her and Leon as such a solid team, honestly. Though Jane was happier that they hadn’t tried sticking her in a sailor suit to make sure people recognized her as the little girl from RE2. XD
E) Leon arriving in Raccoon City on a mission to find Grace! Because she seemed to be the key to whatever this “Elpis” was. Sherry provided him with some coordinates to a spot in the center of the city that she got off Dr. Gideon’s computer, and he began running through the wreckage, smashing boxes and collecting loot while the OXBoxers joked about how the newspaper printers hadn’t been allowed to evacuate because the final news reporter was determined to get out one last paper and Mike went “not back underground already” when Andy went down to check out an entrance to the subway (fortunately it was barricaded). Unfortunately, after getting some goodies out of an old hotel, Leon pushed his way through the door on the other side into a section of the city that was filled with lots and lots of spider webs…
Aaaand cue an extended boss fight with a horrifying giant spider, because for some reason video games will NOT stop throwing giant spiders at people. D: And this one was even worse because it had a big old maw with teeth behind the usual spider pincers. Leon first had to flee from the damn thing into a very cramped building with very narrow hallways (where he spent his time slashing through webs, killing the monster spider’s little albino children, and getting smashed up quite a few times by the spider leaping through holes in the wall or skittering around behind him), then finally had to fight it properly in a big old boss arena where he had to duck and weave around a central wall and hop up onto and down from a small elevated platform at the back to get a good shot at the Cluster Of Weak Spots on its back. The OXBoxers found the experience largely upsetting, with Andy noting that Ellen would not be playing this game and Jane commenting they’d have to warn her not to watch this bit (given she’s a known massive arachnophobe); Mike and Jane debating if dealing with the load of tiny albino spiders was worse than dealing with the big giant one (Jane thought the load of little spiders was worse due to numbers, while Mike felt they were about the same horror-wise); and Mike and Jane trying to figure out where the big spider even CAME from while Andy did his best to fight it (Jane thought it might be a Spider-Man situation where a spider just ended up in the equipment, while Mike thought it was a deliberate experiment because there was a giant spider boss in RE1 as well – jokes were made about how the scientists just MADE the stuff and then turned it over to Marketing so THEY could sell it). The fight ended with Leon leaping on the spider to kill it with his hatchet, only to have to ride it down as it smashed through a bunch of floors into (ironically) an old subway platform. *shudder* Ugh. Can we stop with the giant spider fights, please? I know they’re an easy way to freak people out, but come on.
F) Leon emerging from the subway near the barricade surrounding the center of Raccoon City (presumably around the bit that was closest to the big old bomb – Mike noted they really should have put it about three miles out) and learning from Sherry there was really no way around it – but fortunately for him, somebody had, in the past, set up some C4 to blast their way through a big old gate in the wall. Of course, in true RE fashion, he had to go and find the detonator (Andy TRIED to set it off with a gunshot, like Mike suggested, but no dice) –
Which led him to a nearby mysterious camp! Containing some orders for the Engineer Corps telling them where the three parts to the detonator were (because of COURSE the stupid thing wouldn’t be in one piece), and a laptop and a mysterious box that couldn’t be accessed because they needed power. Fortunately, there was a generator nearby, which Leon turned on to get everything running again –
But while he was outside, he noticed a familiar patch on the exterior of the tent for the BSAA (either “Bullshit Alcoholics Anonymous” or “Bullshit Automobile Association” if you believed Mike or Andy respectively XD). He reported this to Sherry, who wondered what the hell they were doing in Raccoon City – from what Leon found on the laptop, whoever it was in the squad, they too had been trying to get to the center of town. Which prompted Sherry to reveal something else to Leon –
Namely, that there was no order to bomb Raccoon City in the Pentagon records she’d searched. Meaning that the government hadn’t done it – someone else had. (The gang were like “wasn’t the Pentagon concerned when one of their cities randomly got bombed??” proving they don’t know the American government that well.) Leon wondered who –
And cue the reveal that Dr. Gideon was watching him through the laptop camera while he, Possibly Albert Wesker/Definitely The “Zeno” Character He Was Talking To Before, and Grace flew over the city in the helicopter. *wags finger* I am ashamed of you, Grace. Anyway, Gideon told Zeno that his plan to scare away the DSO had apparently not worked – Zeno told him that he’d leave the matter in Gideon’s hands then, causing Gideon to do a worrying head-flex…
G) And Leon grabbing a “tactical tracker” from the now-powered-up electronic box, (which stated that it would track his kills and give him credits that could later be used to buy things from the box – the gang noted that this was basically an incentive program to kill people) before creeping into a nearby warehouse to investigate it and maybe find a key for the big old box of BSAA stuff outside. He collected a few goodies from the opening room, including gunpowder for crafting (causing Mike to reveal that he has never enjoyed a crafting system in a video game, gasp – Andy promptly accused him of hating most video game mechanics XD Mike: “just the boring ones!”), then ventured deeper into the warehouse, shooting boxes off hooks covered in yellow paint and caution tape to form pathways between high shelves and whatnot –
Before stumbling across a bunch of old zombies digging their way out of the floor! The, uh, concrete floor, which caused some questions for the OXBoxers. XD I left off with Andy discovering that these zombies, despite their emaciated looks, were rather tougher than the ones back in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, with one guy managing to score a nasty hit on Leon with a broken shovel that gave everyone an extreme close-up look at his stubble. *wince* Fortunately Leon was able to get him back and claim the shovel to use against his zombie friends. Because Leon is cool like that. :p We’ll finish this episode off tomorrow and see how far Leon gets into the city – and if Grace really HAS thrown her lot in with the bad guys...
2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got over a page of edits done today, I’m happy to say. :) Today’s session covered:
A) The group reacting to the appearance of Slugs the Hull (so named because it was armed with a pair of slugger rifles), with Kasimir noting to Victor that he would have appreciated him leading with “oh, my parents have a Hull with a pair of slugger rifles down here” when he asked him about traps – Victor retorted that he’d been planning to tell Kasimir about it once they were past the pressure plates, like he’d asked. After all, he hadn’t know Kasimir would fall – he’d honestly been hoping they could just sneak past it! Alice, however, was on Kasimir’s side, saying she would have appreciated a warning about the Hull ready and willing to kill intruders earlier – Smiler quickly corrected her, explaining that slugger rifles were non-lethal, shooting compressed air instead of bullets. Kasimir confirmed that they were handy if you wanted to bring someone down without getting the Spirit Wardens involved – but that they could break bones if you were in range, and Slugs was going to be in range soon, so…
B) Barnaby telling the others it was fine, he’d just order Slugs to stand down – the Hull would never shoot him, he was too rich! Fortunately for his bones, Smiler grabbed his arm and towed him back, stating that he believed Barnaby was on the right track, but had the wrong person – after all, Slugs would be much more likely to listen to a command from a member of the family that owned it, right? Victor anxiously revealed that he’d never actually given Slugs a command before – the Hull had never been awake during his previous visits – but Alice pointed out he was still a Van Dort, and so it was worth a shot. Cue poor Victor nearly strangling himself with his tie and asking Alice not to put it like that. XD She quickly apologized and told him to speak to Slugs like she’d spoken to Abigail when telling her not to immediately rat on them to Bumby at Houndsditch – Victor noted that Abigail had still ratted them out to Bumby, but Alice countered that they’d still bought themselves some time, and after all, Slugs wasn’t a snotty little girl – she hoped, anyway. Victor confirmed that Slugs was almost certainly a condemned prisoner, like most other Hulls...then anxiously noted that the ghost inside felt weirdly flat – he could tell it was there and that was about it. Which, after so much time spent around other, more animate ghosts, really gave him the willies. (As it should, really.) Alice and Smiler said they could discuss the ethics of Hulls later – right, now, they really needed this one not to shoot them.
C) And Victor going up to Slugs, telling it that he was one of the owners of the vault and that the others were his guests, and ordering it to go back to its cupboard and leave them alone! Please. There was a tense moment where Slugs just stared at him –
And then it indicated it understood and turned to clomp back into its hidey-hole. Cue a relieved Victor slumping against the wall, while Smiler gave him a cheery “knew you could do it!” and Barnaby noted he hadn’t been quite forceful enough, but they’d get him used to ordering around the servants yet! Victor just said “thank you” because everything else going through his head was too rude. XD
Ahhh, good stuff. I do love writing my Valicer In The Dark stories – they’re so fun! Tomorrow, the gang goes to take on the final trap between them and the vault door – another nearly-invisible tripwire! Perhaps not as exciting as a Hull armed with compressed-air guns, but still. :p
3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, if only because WeirdKev on tumblr shared the link to a YouTube Short with me to get my opinion on it: “The "Apocalypse" of 1910 | Weird Days in History” by Extra History! A one-minute video talking about how, in May of 1910, there was a bit of a panic when Earth passed through the tail of Haley’s Comet thanks to Camille Flammarion, a popular French science writer at the time. You see, Flammarion wrote a couple of articles musing about what might happen when Earth passed through the tail of the comet in late 1909 and early 1910 – and while most of his predictions were of the sober “this won’t be a big deal” sort, he did throw in a couple of wild speculations about the comet triggering a “chemical exchange” that would destroy Earth’s oxygen, or – when the comet was discovered to have cyanogen gas (“a cousin of cyanide,” as the narrator put it) – poisoning all life on earth. Unfortunately for him, the press naturally decided to spread around the wild speculations without actually noting that they were intended to be the worst case scenarios and unlikely to happen, leading to a not-insignificant number of people boarding up their houses to avoid the gas, defaulting on loans and refusing to plant crops because what was the point, and even in one case hiding in a cave. We even had the usual assholes taking advantage of the panic to sell useless “comet pills” to protect you from the gas and helmets to save you from falling objects. Naturally, nothing actually happened, and presumably everyone felt very silly afterward. Just a good object lesson in how, if you’re a famous figure a lot of people listen to, maybe temper your wild predictions about stuff like this just a tad! Or at least make sure the press doesn’t get a hold of them.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do on Valice Multiverse again, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did manage to find a couple of things to fill out my queue for the week:
A) That text post by callagoo going “anyone else think the corpse bride should have ended with victor and victoria and emily as a poly couple” (and my tags saying “yup me”) for Friday
B) And a reblog of “Fan.tasia” (that incredible music video of mashed-up Disney movies to a song that itself was a mash-up of multiple other songs – if you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself) from the depths of my “#song saturday” tag for Saturday!
So that was good. :)
Yeah, not bad -- though it all took longer than I wanted thanks to the damn period. *grumbles* Well, that's just gonna happen during this time of the month, I suppose...anyway, now that I've finally wrapped up all of these write-ups, it's time to consider going to bed. Tomorrow, main goals are to work a little more on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; work some more on Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" play some Baldur's Gate III and finally freaking recruit Karlach; and get in a workout and finish that RE9 LP episode from OXBox! We'll see how I do -- night all!
